Saturday, 27 February 2016

I
remember saying in an interview once, that making fun with someone's work, is
like an ode to that person. Like Marcel Duchamp drawing a moustache on the Mona
Lisa, and saying she's got a wet pussy, hence her mystic smile. I can only see
a nice kind of love in these sort of jokes. It's like a schoolyard where you
make fun of the girl you actually really like. So in a way, you can see this
selection of predecessors, dead teachers, whom I can only speak with through their and my own
work, as girls I fell in love with. Awkward dialogues. And making fun. On the
playground of the arts.

So
I'm pleased they've asked me for this blog, because now, within this context, I
have the opportunity to show and tell you a bit about these particular kind of
works (perhaps I could call them 'loveletters' from now on) within my oeuvre,
wich are all, on purpose of course,
very close to it's origin. Shown together, for the first time. Nicely with the
fallen heroes.

1. Marcel
Broodthaers/Vincent Dams

The
first time I saw Broodthaers' museum cap, it made me think of a book by André
Malraux called 'La Musée Imaginaire'. I once found a German copy of the book on
a fleemarket and as I remember (it's a long time ago since I've read it, and
also, my German is not that well) it was about the idea that a museum becomes
obsolete after photograpy and it's reproduction in books make it possible for
all people to enjoy art in their own homes. I imagined Broodthaers cap as being
architecture. A building, covering the head, embracing the museum of the mind.
But then, thinking of my own mind. I rather thought of it as the depot of a
museum. So I made my own cap.

1. Marcel Broodthaers

Casquette
'museum'1970

1. Vincent Dams

'Depot'
Pet2007

2. Bas Jan
Ader/Vincent Dams

We're
still not telling.

2. Bas Jan Ader

I'm
too sad to tell you1970

2. Vincent Dams

I'm
too glad to tell you2014

3. Ger van
Elk/Vincent DamsFirst
year of the academy a teacher told me to look at Mr. van Elk's work. He said we
shared a same kind of struggle with esthetics. I don't know about that. But I do know I instantly
fell in love with 'The Discovery of the Sardines'. It's nice energy combined
with the absurdity felt like a great freedom. In the years following this
discovery, every now and then, when I'm taking a walk, I fill a crack in honor
of Mr. van Elk, with whatever is laying around or I got in my bag. But no
sardines. I never really have sardines in my bag.

3. Ger van Elk

The
Discovery of the Sardines

1971

3. Vincent Dams

The
Discovery of the very, very, very Lost Mohican, 2006& The Discovery of the Kinder Schoko Bons, 2010

4. Gerrit
Rietveld/Vincent DamsIn
one of the secondhand stores in my hometown Eindhoven they have a big glass
kabinet in wich they display the nicer things they've received, on wich you can
bid. One time there was this Rietveld chair, on wich of course I bid too low. And ever since I really
wanted to have this famous chair. I googled the plans, but didn't make a copy
untill years later when I was working on a project about a fictional character,
for whom I invented the term 'outsider­critic' (that's the arthistorian/critic
equivalent for outsider­artist), who lived in a riverboathouse in the woods
where he was rewriting the history of art on his own particular terms.
According to his son, the father had no furniture except this Rietveld chair he
made for himself out of deadwood. So I made that one instead. The other one I
did, the children's version, was after a sketch for a poster called 'Rietveld
from Space'. I imagined that it's red back was stretched and came from miles
and miles and miles away, from a different galaxy. This looked so stupid, that
I just had to make it. But apart from these lovely baby's, I also still wan't
to make a proper one. It's such a great chair.

4. Gerrit Rietveld

Red
Blue Chair

c. 1923

4.a. Vincent Dams

Bernard
D. Bogart's Rietveld out of Deadwood Chair

2015

4.b. Vincent Dams

Baby's
Got Back (Rietveld from Space)

2015

5. Piet
Mondriaan/Vincent Dams

What
if our beloved Piet wasn't a strict, milkywhite Dutchman, but a bit too smooth,
bronzed Italian guy? This work sprung from the fact that I haven't been on
vacation for a couple of years now. So the other title for this work was
"Bij gebrek aan een kraakheldere blauwe zee vakantie, kunt u ook op geheel
andere wijze uw oerhollandse rechtlijnigheid van een mediteraanse schwung
voorzien",wich roughly translates as "Lacking a crystal clear blue
sea holiday, there's also a completely different way to provide your
traditional Dutch linearity with some Mediterranean panache". So, there you
have it.

5. Piet Mondriaan

Compositie
met geel en rood

1927

oil on canvas

52 x 35 cm

5.
Vincent Dams

Piedro
Mondriano, Composizione con giallo e rosso

2015

oil on paper

100 x 70 cm

6. René
Magritte/Vincent DamsIn
'La clairvoyance' we see Magritte, the painter himself, looking at an egg and
painting a bird. I had the idea of making a whole series of drawings, a kind of
cliché narrative about what would happen next. The bird get's eaten by a cat.
The cat get's bitten by a dog. The dog get's kicked by a boy. The boy get's
slapped by a man. The man get's hit by a truck. The truck drives off a cliff
hitting a dam. The dam brakes and floods the town... Something like that, but I
only made a drawing with the cat.

6. René Margritte

De
helderziendheid (zelfportret)

1936

oil on linen

54,5 x 65,5 cm

6. Vincent Dams

René
Resumé

2008

pencil on paper

35 x 25 cm

7.
Rembrandt van Rijn/Vincent Dams

Once,
drunk at night, I discovered a secret selfportrait of Rembrandt in one of his etchings. But up till now,
no art historian has taken this seriously. Allthough we can all clearly see
it's there. Calling this a case of pareidolia seems utterly naïve. :)

Tuesday, 9 February 2016

Rijksmuseum AmsterdamFebruary 9, 2016, the day of issue of this post, is the 125th dying day of J.B. Jongkind.

With J.B.
Jongkind in the street

A
Jongkind in the Rijksmuseum is indispensable. It represents an episode that colorizes
the cradle of French impressionism. Symbolic is that the national flag in the
life of the painter tilted from horizontal to vertical. The Dutchman Johan
Barthold Jongkind (born in Lattrop, Overijssel in 1819 and deceased in the
French Cote Saint André near Grenoble in 1891) remains a French artist for the
French. In art history I compare him with a stray pea in the freezer
compartment of the Dutch refrigerator. Around the green bean frozen leftovers
and ready-made meals are removed one by one from the freezer. The dried pea
continues to wander like a vagrant. But once thawed, put him on a sponge and
spring jumps you in the face. That phenomenon is more than a predictable trick
after 130 years. Jongkind was a wolf to himself, he suffered hallucinations,
became confused and languished repeatedly. Claude Monet, who learned the
approach to light and the brushstroke as a pupil of the Dutch pioneer,
described the morbid personality of Jongkind with the observation: "...
Jongkind est mort pour l'art ". Monet meant: "Jongkind is lost for
the art." But the man had nine lives. He was mercifully helped by, among
others Madame Fesser and is buried beside her.

I
adore the pea Jongkind in different ways. He is an outsider. The painter, who
is refused to salons, no longer participates in the flirtation among
celebrities. His contemporaries, the Goncourt brothers (the two men had a third
eye for the avant-garde) are starting to recognize him as the first and only original
spirit that knows to express innovation. In their eyes the rest of the
painters' guild is asleep and constantly trying to, left or right, go past the
old Delacroix at a snail's pace. The Dutchman appears to have a convincing hand
with his sketches in the open air. Often he paints or draws from direct
observation. In the studio he starts off with the summary notes and uses his
sublime color memory. Can you describe a color, and then reproduce it? That apple
green with a hint of white at the edges with a dark pastel in blue gray? In his
boat and harbor scenes Jongkind can do precisely that, so it seems to us today.
This painting is made on the street, judging the size. Jongkind conducts us
casually to every corner of the scene. Each cornice, in-between wall and
chimney has its own character. Even the outside walls have two or three shades
of beige which he applied wet-on-wet. This creates a spell. In each plane is a
brushstroke that matches with a light contour in the next plane. Thus he
achieves a motion with a convincing point of rest. He does this with the layout
and the heavy shadows, where again little figures in detail appear. Jongkind didn't
copy photography, but he recorded and absorbed the whole scene with a sense of
small details. With what suppleness and control the work is created.

That's
part of the mystery surrounding Jongkind, he was unbearable to himself, a man
suffering from life itself. In him raged a genius that didn't spare him, he
didn't dance the polonaise in the painters movement of that time. I see him as
the pioneer who exposed himself to great challenges, including sorrow, and yet
was able to give back a universal view of the world. Fleming Maurice Guilliams wrote
a poem in 1943 called "The man at the window". Actually, in this poem
the artist steals a piece from reality and returns it through art. Just because
of that removal and return, we become aware what we have missed earlier and why
we are going to look better.

This
'Rue Notre-Dame' by J.B. Jongkind from 1866 is an example in that movement. This
painting evokes an era. The street scene still appears as everyday life.
Although without taxis, cars, advertising and wide skirts. Jongkind can hardly
be caught using quick brushwork and smooth sentiments. His perception shakes up
our view. He intensifies perception with his brushstroke. That ability has been
recognized with awe and slight jealousy in his time. By his hand a sequence
between all kinds of shapes with their contours appears to exist. As though the
whole image houses a subcutaneous planning that we begin to recognize with
attentive examination. Jongkind gives a name to things and at the same time has
a mysterious force run along in the picture. Would you have asked Jongkind to work
out a storyboard for a scene from a movie, then we stand here in the Rue
Notre-Dame, looking at the next moment what will happen. Thanks to J.B.
Jongkind, in late May or June 1866, my estimation.

ABOUT THIS BLOG

A blog where invited artists show that they stand in a tradition by expressing their commitment to an inspiring, no longer living predecessor. Nothing But Good Should Be Said Of The Dead.
A blog by Michael de Kok, René Korten and Reinoud van Vught.